Once existing only in the imaginations of science fiction writers, AI has become a reality that’s changing the way the world does business. Industries are being transformed, and CEOs are rethinking their organisations’ culture, ethics, and strategies, and their own roles as leaders.
With the arrival of artificial intelligence optimisation (AIO), generative engine optimisation (GEO), Search Generative Experience (SGE), and other web-based technologies, CEOs need to take a new approach to communication, decision-making, and long-term growth.
AI in business strategy
Initially, AI’s role in business strategy was almost entirely limited to operational convenience. However, it’s clear that AI’s ability to increase an organisation’s competitive advantage by anticipating customer behaviour through predictive analytics or improving internal workflows with natural language models demands a greater place in strategy.
However, Gartner research revealed that only an approximate one-third of CEOs have an AI-friendly operating and business model. That said, a third or more of CEOs plan to introduce systems that potentially can be fully automated in product and service design and production, contract creation, and logistics and distribution, and 68 percent of CEOs are developing strategies to integrate employees and machines, such as AI models and robots. Additionally, more than half of the CEOs surveyed plan to use AI to de-layer middle management roles in the next five years.
The catch is, to integrate AI successfully, you need to ensure that your organisation’s AI strategy supports your wider business goals. Part of this involves identifying AI-ready processes as well as where AI can deliver the highest ROI. You need to hire new talent and upskill existing talent to build, audit, and manage AI systems, and ensure fairness and transparency in AI-driven decisions by establishing clear ethical guidelines.
As necessary as these elements are, they’re still not enough for a comprehensive AI strategy. You also need to take AIO, GEO, and SGE into account.
AIO: Digital presence design for AI
AIO is not dissimilar to SEO. However, traditional SEO is no longer sufficient to see your site or content ranked in AI-generated search results – hence the need to optimise your organisation’s digital presence for AI.
To do this effectively, content, data, and interfaces must be structured in a way that ensures AI tools make the best use of them. This is especially the case with AI tools that make recommendations, summarise documents, and synthesise information, such as ChatGPT, Bing AI, and Google Gemini.
Start by creating AI-friendly knowledge graphs that help these tools better understand your services. At the same time, ensure your internal content is carefully structured to maintain contextual relevance and enhance machine readability. Consistent tagging of data is also essential, as it supports automated reporting, forecasting, and personalisation efforts.
Additionally, encourage your marketing team to focus on conversational search optimisation, which makes it easier for AI virtual assistants and chatbots that rely on natural language processing (NLP) to interpret and retrieve information effectively.
GEO: Taking advantage of AI-driven discovery
With more people turning to ChatGPT and other generative engines for information, and as AI models are incorporated into more search engines (think Google’s Search Generative Experience), it’s vital that your brand is findable within their outputs. This is where GEO comes in. Something like a more finely tuned form of AIO, GEO is focused on how organisations appear in AI-generated content.
Unlike with SEO, you can’t rely on keywords alone to achieve this. Instead, your organisation’s GEO strategy should focus on accurate, good-quality data being fed into public and semi-public knowledge repositories. One way to support this is by using AI-powered website builders that automatically structure your site content for optimal AI interpretation. These tools accelerate development by as much as 92 percent and help to ensure your content is formatted in a way that large language models (LLMs) can easily crawl, understand, and surface in generative results, putting you ahead in the race for AI visibility.
GEO is focused on how organisations appear in AI-generated content
Your strategy should also include the monitoring and auditing of AI tools’ descriptions of your organisation, products, and reputation, and the creation of structured content designed to be interpreted and synthesised by LLMs.
As a CEO, you need to be aware that, as much as GEO offers opportunities to see your organisation appear as a trusted answer in AI-powered searches and other interactions, it comes with a risk. If AI tool outputs are biased or incorrect, they could influence users’ perceptions without your consent or knowledge.
Data culture, algorithmic literacy, and risk management
The quality of the data that AI tools use determines the quality of their outputs. It’s imperative that you instil a data-centric culture in your organisation. Make sure that every team, no matter their role, understands that data must be clean, ethical, and structured.
Algorithmic literacy is just as important. While you don’t need to learn how to code, you do need to understand the basics of how AI models learn, make decisions, and occasionally fail. Armed with this understanding, you can challenge assumptions, ask relevant questions, and ensure reliable governance structures and risk management frameworks are in place.
You need to instil an AI culture without compromising your organisation’s human values
Risk management is non-negotiable, given how AI has ushered in new risks and put a new spin on old risks. Among these are data privacy breaches, legal liability, and biased decision-making.
Work closely with your compliance, cybersecurity, and legal teams to establish strong frameworks that include but aren’t limited to clear lines of accountability for algorithmic outcomes, AI ethics policies and internal guidelines, and third-party audits of high-impact models. In terms of the latter, pay special attention to models used for hiring, pricing, or lending.
The human aspect
As important as the above is, it’s vital that you don’t lose sight of the human aspects of using AI to your organisation’s advantage. While some of your employees might fully embrace AI, others might not trust it or might fear it as something that will eventually replace them. This means you need to instil an AI culture without compromising your organisation’s human values.
Do this by championing psychological safety, empowering your teams to learn and innovate. You also need to communicate AI’s role clearly, highlighting what it means for your employees and educating them about what will change and what will remain the same.
Take your organisation forward
Given the implications of AI and the web for organisations, the CEOs who will take their brands into the future with confidence are those who adopt a mindset of ethical foresight, lifelong learning, and technological fluency. AIO and GEO have become realities in business, so you cannot afford to ignore them.
It’s not enough to merely acknowledge them. You need to navigate them skilfully if you want your organisation to thrive through continued visibility.